Face to Face AUTUMN/WINTER 2012
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F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 1 Face to Face AUTUMN/WINTER 2012 The Lost Prince: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart My Favourite Portrait by Dame Anne Owers DBE Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 2 COVER AND BELOW Henry, Prince of Wales by Robert Peake, c.1610 This portrait will feature in the exhibition The Lost Prince: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart from 18 October 2012 until 13 January 2013 in the Wolfson Gallery Face to Face Issue 40 Deputy Director & Director of Communications and Development Pim Baxter Communications Officer Helen Corcoran Editor Elisabeth Ingles Designer Annabel Dalziel All images National Portrait Gallery, London and © National Portrait Gallery, London, unless stated www.npg.org.uk Recorded Information Line 020 7312 2463 F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 3 FROM THE DIRECTOR THIS OCTOBER the Gallery presents The Lost cinema photographer Fred Daniels, who Prince: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart, photographed such Hollywood luminaries as the first exhibition to explore the life and Anna May Wong, Gilda Gray and Sir Laurence legacy of Henry, Prince of Wales (1594–1612). Olivier, and Ruth Brimacombe, Assistant Curator Catharine MacLeod introduces this Curator, writes about Victorian Masquerade, fascinating exhibition, which focuses on a a small display of works from the Collection remarkable period in British history dominated which illustrate the passion for fancy dress by a prince whose death at a young age indulged by royalty, the aristocracy and artists precipitated widespread national grief, and in the nineteenth century. led to the accession to the throne of his younger brother, King Charles I, whose reign Clare Barlow, Assistant Curator, explores ended with the Civil War. some of the Gallery’s hidden gems, including portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize Angelica Kauffmann, on show as part of The 2012 opens at the Gallery in November; Tim Art of Drawing: Portraits from the Collection, Eyles, Managing Partner, Taylor Wessing LLP, 1670–1780, and in Henry and Catherine reflects on past competitions and looks Reunited Tarnya Cooper, Chief Curator, forward to this year’s exhibition. recounts her experience of rediscovering an important lost portrait of Henry VIII’s first This season includes a variety of free displays wife Catherine of Aragon. throughout the Gallery. Painter Humphrey Ocean previews A handbook of modern life, Lastly, we report on the Gallery’s London 2012 a selection of his recent portraits, and Clare Marathon fundraising success in aid of the Freestone, Associate Curator of Photographs, latest Hospital Schools project; Chair of the looks at Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair, Independent Police Complaints Commission a display of press photographs and magazine Dame Anne Owers DBE writes about her covers produced during Marilyn’s time in the favourite portrait, and you can read about the UK filming The Prince and the Showgirl. Helen importance of legacies in securing works for Trompeteler, Assistant Curator of Photographs, the Collection. considers the work of early twentieth-century Sandy Nairne DIRECTOR 1 F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 4 MY FAVOURITE PORTRAIT LEFT AND BELOW Dame Anne Owers DBE by Dame Anne Owers DBE by Diarmuid Kelley, 2010 Campaigner, administrator and policy Thomas Cromwell, adviser; former HM Chief Inspector of Earl of Essex Prisons; Chair of the Independent Police after Hans Holbein the Younger (1533–1534), early 17th century Complaints Commission On display in Room 1 I’D CHOOSE THOMAS CROMWELL. It’s not the of an embryonic Civil Service. Whether or not best portrait in the Gallery’s Collection, or even you agreed with Elton – and he rarely agreed the best version of this particular portrait (the with anyone else – was not the point. This Holbein original is in the Frick Collection in New was not history as pageant, but history as the York, where he casts a rather baleful eye across gathering, testing and analysing of fragments a fireplace at the more reflective Sir Thomas of evidence to discern the underlying pattern More), but it fascinated me long before Hilary and narrative, looking under the surface and Mantel re-imagined his story in Wolf Hall. beyond the exterior. That discipline served me well as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons: seeing I was one of very few History undergraduates through wet paint, hastily assembled new in my year not to have overdosed on the policies and outward civilities, gathering Tudors at school. So I came fresh to this information, watching and listening to what fascinating period and the insights of some is and isn’t done and said, in order to create outstanding lecturers and teachers, including a portrait of a total institution. Geoffrey Elton (uncle of the now more famous Ben), who credited Cromwell with the creation And that is another reason I like this portrait, and many other Holbeins. He gets under Cromwell’s skin. It isn’t the symbols of his office in front of him that draw you in. It is his eyes. They are the eyes of a consummate politician and tactician: watchful, shrewd, authoritative. This is not a vain man, but a man who is confidently in control – for the present. For, like all politicians, Cromwell’s career ended in failure, which meant not a best-selling book of memoirs, but the execution block. But his portrait captures the moment: the power before the fall. Dame Anne Owers DBE had a long career in the non- governmental sector, focusing on asylum, race, human rights and criminal justice. From 2001 to 2010 she was HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales. She is a Trustee of the Koestler Trust, promoting art by offenders. In April 2012, she became Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. 2 F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 5 A HANDBOOK OF MODERN LIFE Humphrey Ocean: BELOW FROM LEFT A handbook of modern Gabor, 2009 by Humphrey Ocean life Phoebe, 2011 Artist from 23 November 2012 by Humphrey Ocean Rooms 41 and 41a © Humphrey Ocean Admission free WHATEVER ANYONE SAYS, there is a difference a painting is what I have been doing with between a Rothko and a portrait, how we people I know. They allow me to sit too close think and feel about them. A different part and stare, itself an uneasy thing to do. It has of our brain and body reacts. Coming across stretched me too, partly because for the first a portrait of someone you know, or know of, time I really do not know what I am doing, is also not quite the same as looking at Van and I am particularly excited about showing Gogh’s picture of Joseph Roulin. There we them here. I sometimes wonder. One reason notice Vincent, more than the postman. I became an artist is that I like being in my You could say portraying a person is the room and closing my door. This is what trickiest subject because we know too much. happens when I open the door. In real life a simple thing like catching someone’s eye can change our lives in a second. Stretching this moment out for just as long as it takes to set it down and make 3 F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 6 THE LOST PRINCE: THE LIFE AND TOP BOTTOM Henry, Prince of Wales Henry, Prince of Wales DEATH OF HENRY STUART when an infant and Robert Devereux, by Catharine MacLeod by an unknown artist, 1596 3rd Earl of Essex Private Collection by Robert Peake, c.1605 Curator of Seventeenth-Century Portraits The Royal Collection. Photo: Supplied by Royal Collection Trust/ © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012 ON 7 DECEMBER 1612 the funeral procession of an eighteen-year-old royal prince wound its way from St James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey. Over 2,000 official mourners followed the hearse, 400 more than had followed that of Queen Elizabeth I nine years earlier. An eye-witness described the people lining the streets as: ‘An innumerable multitude of all sorts of ages and degrees of men, women and children … some weeping, crying, howling, wringing of their hands, others halfe dead, sounding, sighing inwardly, others holding up their hands, passionately bewayling so great a losse, with Rivers, nay with an Ocean of teares.’ Parallel funerals were held simultaneously in Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge. Today Henry, Prince of Wales is all but forgotten. If he had lived, he would have been crowned King Henry IX of England and I of Scotland on the death of his father; his brother Charles would not have succeeded to the throne as Charles I, and the course of history would have been different. This exhibition reconsiders Prince Henry’s life and achievements, seeking to establish just what it was about him that made his loss seem so catastrophic not only to his family and his followers, but to the whole country and indeed all of Britain’s allies in Europe. Henry was born in 1594, the eldest son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark. As he was heir to the throne of Scotland his birth was of great significance, and after James’s accession to the English throne in 4 F2F_Issue 40_FINAL (TS)_Layout 1 20/07/2012 12:11 Page 7 The Lost Prince: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart BELOW from 18 October 2012 until 13 January 2013 Henry, Prince of Wales Wolfson Gallery on horseback Admission £13 (with Gift Aid) by Robert Peake, c.1606–8 Concessions £12/£11 (with Gift Aid) From The Collection at Parham House, Pulborough, West Sussex.